


Four Times Buffy Surprised Someone

by likeadeuce



Category: Angel The Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-15
Updated: 2010-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-07 07:20:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce





	Four Times Buffy Surprised Someone

**Gunn**

"Don't take this wrong," Gunn said, as he grabbed at the stake that Buffy was throwing toward him, "but you're not exactly what I expected." He tossed it into his other hand, planted his feet, and held his arm out just in time for the screaming, red-eyed vamp to run into the sharp point. Just like drawing a charge in basketball. Sometimes you could let momentum do all the work.

As the dust swirled around them, Buffy scrunched her face, and crouched to pick up the stake. She looked distastefully at her fingers, scraping some ash from one of her nails. Then she turned her frown up at him. "What are you saying? Are you saying you think I'm too short to be a legend?"

"No. That's what I thought when I met Spike." He offered a hand, and she pulled up out of her crouch. "I guess I thought you'd be more like Faith," he admitted.

"Hey!" She stepped in front of him, in a fighting pose, and said, "I'd totally hit you for that one, but we have to present a united front. In case there are more of them. But for the record, I register a 'hey!'"

"Faith's good people," Gunn said, instinctively loyal to the first slayer he had met. Or maybe it was just that the way Faith was, tough and proud and never one to walk away from a fight, always reminded Gunn of his sister.

"Faith's okay," Buffy admitted, grudgingly. She took point, moving toward one end of the street. Gunn watched her back, moving the other way, looking for exposed alleys they might have missed.

"Just okay? I thought the two of you had gone in the baby-slayer raising business together."

"All right, more than okay. She's good leader. But you notice we work together at a distance from each other. She's in England. We're in Cleveland." Buffy turned back to Gunn and nodded. "All clear. We should get back to base." And as he came up beside her, she said, "What you're trying to tell me is that Faith would never go slaying and worry about dust under her fingernails."

Gunn laughed. "Something like that. I'm just saying. Faith looks as tough as she is."

"Especially with the jailhouse tats," Buffy conceded. She glanced at her arm. "Maybe I should get some tats."

Gunn touched the shoulder of her halter top, which was purple, and had an oddly sparkling surface. "Or maybe just lose the glitter."

"Maybe." She stepped into stride with him, and they walked in thoughtful silence, for a moment. "Maybe I don't want to lose the glitter. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to be underestimated, every once in a while."

"And though she be but little, she is fierce?" Gunn suggested. He didn't remember where the quotation came from; something left over from before the big fight, a bit of disconnected trivia floating around his mind along with the _second_ verse (never the first, never even the chorus) of every song from _HMS Pinafore._.

"Yeah, sure," said Buffy. "You ever know anybody like that?"

Gunn thought of Fred, of all the times she proved that she didn't need anyone to save her. "Yeah," he said, falling into step with her. "Yeah, it kind of rings a bell."

**Illyria**

The Blonde Slayer lacked the distinguishing traits of a true warrior.

"You lack the distinguishing of a true warrior," Illyria said. Because Wesley had explained to her that humans valued honesty.

The Blonde Slayer put a hand on one hip and stared at Illyria. "And what would those be, exactly? Breaking every plate in the kitchen because you don't like what Xander got for dinner?"

"The appearance of the sushi fish is displeasing to me!" The one-eyed manchild had informed Illyria that they would be dining on the raw flesh of fearsome sea creatures. And yet the repast spread before her contained only a mixture of oddly colored morsels, arranged in a manner that decadent humans might consider attractive, but that certainly would not fit the palate of the mighty Illyria. "This meal is not suitable for the god-king of the primordium."

"All right, Smurfy," said the Blonde Slayer. "You don't have to like Xander's selection of seafood –"

"We can go back to the restaurant," said the red-haired witch. "Get some different nigiri."

"And some more sushi, too," said the one-eyed carpenter.

"But leave my warrioring skills out of it!" the Slayer exclaimed.

"A true warrior," Illyria proclaimed, "would have destroyed me for my insolence. If you had real power, you would make me suffer."

"Is she always like this, Angel?" the Slayer bemoaned, casting her eyes toward her dark-haired champion.

"Pretty much," said Angel.

"There's always the tried and true Sam-I-am approach," offered the white-haired vampire. He pointed toward one of the rolls. "Would you like them in a boat? Would you like them with a goat?"

Illyria harbored something like affection for the white-haired creature. She had repeatedly requested to be allowed to keep it as a pet. However, at this moment, she chose to send it flying into the wall. "I do not like goats," she proclaimed.

The Slayer looked at the others in the room. "It's going to be a long week."

**Connor**

"You're Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Connor set his books down on the table in the sun-drenched café and offered her his most charming grin. "You're _the_ Buffy, _the_ Vampire Slayer?"

"If you say you thought I'd be taller. . ."

"No."

"Have more tattoos?"

"No."

"Be more prompt? Because I wasn't totally sure about these directions."

"Less prompt, actually –" Connor pulled out a chair for her, showing the impeccable manners that his Riley parents had taught him. "I didn't think you'd come at all. To be honest," he said – and it was only a little white lie – "I wasn't sure you were real."

Buffy frowned, but took the seat. "Well, I know you're real, umm. . .Connor." She glanced at the cheat note she had written on the back of her hand. It was a cute habit; Connor used to do it himself, and so did his girlfriend Tracy, and his sister Mere. One day he had sat between the two of them, outside of their high school, waiting for his Dad to come and take them to a Dodger game. Connor looked down at their three hands lined up on top of the picnic table, with "Dodgers 3:00" written on each of them, and he thought how fortunate he was to live out his life like this, around people who understood him.

Of course, none of that had ever happened.

"My name is Connor," he told Buffy, watching her for any signs of recognition.

"You said on the phone," Buffy answered, glancing around the café, at the memorabilia of the local university. "You go to Stanford, hmm? Are you one of those demon-killing boys, like on the WB? Is that how you know about –" she leaned over the table "- the S-L-A-Y-E-R."

Her nose crinkled in a funny way when she concentrated. Connor could understand Angel falling for her. It wasn't any gross kind of thought. It was just a fact. He leaned closer to her side of the table and whispered, "Most of the people who work here go to Stanford, too. I'm pretty sure they can spell 'slayer.'"

"Oh." Buffy sighed. "Good point. So how did you --?"

"I know a guy who knows a guy who used to be a Watcher. Rumor has it your people figured out a way to get Angel and his friends out of that alley after all."

"Angel?" Buffy repeated. "You know Angel --?" Her eyes must have traced something in the lines on his face, because they focused and then widened. "He – you -- How is it even possible?"

"He really didn't tell you?" Connor shook his head. "Fathers, man."

**Angel**

"This is different than I thought it would be," Angel admitted.

Buffy frowned. "Angel. You're supervising a houseful of hormonal teenagers, together with your vampire slaying ex-girlfriend, her high school friends, your soul-bonded vampire chylde – who is also your ex's ex – , an incarnated ancient god with a grudge against California rolls, various and sundry sidekicks and – oh yes – your son who shouldn't exist, by another vampire. Angel – what is that not different _from_?"

Connor walked by them, then, gave a cheerful wave. "Hey, Buffy, we're out of Hot Pockets. Also, Spike and Xander were arguing _Sopranos_ versus _Desperate Housewives_, and they broke the remote. And possibly some furniture."

"They're doing that a lot, lately," Angel mused. "I wonder if it means anything."

Buffy shrugged. "At least Xander's a carpenter. He can clean it up. Now –" As Connor left, Buffy turned to Angel. "Are you sure this isn't different enough for you?"

"I guess I meant –" Angel looked at her face, thinner than it had been, but the same eyes. "You. You're not as different as I expected. You went off to Europe to be . . ." He stopped, trying to remember the words she had used.

"Cookie dough?"

"Right," Angel said. And that explained the sudden craving for chocolate chip, which was pointless because, as a vampire, he couldn't taste chocolate. There was probably a metaphor in there, not worth dwelling on. "You went there to grow and change, and I guess I thought I'd never get you back. But –"

"But?" Buffy tilted her head and looked at him with interest.

"But you're still you. Still Buffy."

"Just being the best Buffy I can be," she said. "Which means I've refereed half a dozen slayerette fights, staked so many vamps I've lost count and stopped three – did we ever decide what was the plural of apocalypse? We should ask Giles when he comes through here next week – "

"That's just in the last month," Angel said.

Buffy sighed. "I guess you're right. My life really hasn't changed that much."

"Do you want it to?"

"Huh?"

"I'm asking. Do you want it to? Do you wish things were different, that you didn't have all of these responsibilities?"

"Sometimes," Buffy admitted. She looked down at her hands. "Gunn mocked me for it, a little, the other night. But sometimes I wish I still lived the kind of life where breaking a nail would be a big event."

"Only sometimes?" he asked.

"Yeah. Only some. Most of the time, I don't want to be anywhere else." She looked up at Angel. "Are you surprised?"

And, for one brief rare moment, he allowed himself to smile. "No," he told her. "Not a bit."


End file.
